president trump is scheduled to meet with his russia counter part, vladimir putin. dismay, president trump is striking a different and less controversial tone with the britain prime minister one day after trashing her in an interview. taking on trump. thousands of protesters marching through the streets of london as the president has tea with queen elizabeth. a wide scale hacking operation in an attempt to undermine the 2016 election. the justice department announcing criminal charges against 12 russian military officers. rod rosenstein made the indictment public at a news conference just a short while ago and added this. >> i want to caution this that the people who speculate about federal investigations usually do not know all of the relevant facts. we do not try cases of

television or congressional hearings. most leaks are not from the government officials who are actually conducting these investigations. we follow the rules of law which means we follow procedures. >> we are getting details from our ken delany who's joining me now and clint watts is with me and matt miller is an msnbc analyst and gregg broward. ken, let's start with the conspiracy here. it is outlined in three parts. these hackers here try to hack those systems and computers. that's the first part. the second is to steal information and e-mails and documents and the third as i understand it was to disseminate what they have taken.

walk us through the indictment and the conspiracy part, ken. >> this indictment is significant on a number of level. the fact that it -- that's a step that's rarely taken by the united states. we do our own intelligence gathering and we don't want our own officer to be charged. the russians crossed the line. they are charged against the russia intelligence. we know the broad zrostroke for some time because it was detailed and a lot of newsroom reporting. the russian gru is hacked. both the democratic committee and john podesta scooped up thousands of e-mails and desimildi similar nated them. those are russian intelligence officers posing as us. they moved into delivering

documents to wikileaks and wikileaks is not mentioned in this indictment. there is a missing section of what happened after those documents began being dissemina disseminated. another aspect of this is the timing. it is coming on the eve of a summit between donald trump and vladimir putin and rod rosenstein made it clear that he briefed the president last week of this indictment was coming. what he did not say that was the president had any decision making power over this. normally when the u.s. government makes the extraordinary decision to indict foreign officers and the government. the president is an integral part of that. this is robert mueller producing that document. this is part two of a story that mueller is trying to tell of how the russians interfered with the 2016 election. the first part of the story of a massive indictment, again, the

internet surge, we saw other russians, purchasing ads illegally and violating campaign laws. this indictment tells the story of the hacking and leaking operation. what dit does not do is charge any americans knowingly participated in this conspiracy. >> let's dig through there clint, let me turn to you, unit what can you learn about them through the support that ken have said that we have the accusers' name here. >> the task organization put out the levels and the indictment. they actually assigned operators to targets and operators to targets dump. this is the missing sauce that everybody complained about with the hacking of the dnc servers

or any of the leaks that came out of the d.c. leak, where is the proof? >> this is something they are pushing against putin and other members of the republican party. when you look at this. clinton's name with persona either e-mails or addresses or some cases, social media accounts. they link it. maybe those leakages are critical and bringing all those pieces together. >> let me turn to you here. >> we heard a little bit from it. >> the discord surrounding all of this and there is the 9.5 hearing yesterday on capitol hill that was fused with poli c politi politics. how dit d it resonate with you?

>> he has never directly mention the president and directly rebutted the president making those attacks. he talked generally of the effects those attacks have on the department and tried to defend the work of the people at the department, we saw him do that again today. when you look at the timing of this indictment. one of the things he said was look, we return indictment when they are ready. that's true to some extent. they could have returned that a week from now. they could have returned it next friday without any significant loss o f the case it seems. it does seem like they were timing this in advance of the president's summit, give the president a talking point that he may or may not want to use against vladimir putin or at a time that the american public is paying attention to you know vladimir putin and donald trump meeting and talking about u.s./russia relations. this is the justice department

saying we don't want the american public to forget what he did in the election and special counsel is working on a real investigation that's not a witch haunt and it is going to deliver hard development. >> continuing to dig through. katy tur is with me onset here. let's go back to july 27, 2016. the president made this plea to russia. the time, if you had the e-mails released in this 20 plus pages today, that date comes up as well. >> this date does keep oncoming up and it could prove of one of the most important dates of the 2016 campaign. this is a press conference. donald trump was holding it at his golf course resort. in florida, i was there. he says this, russia, if you are listening and you can find those 30,000 missing e-mails, there's do so.

we have that sound byte, let's play it fast. >> russia, if you are listening, i hope you are able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. i think you will be rewarded by our press mightily. >> that was rumor of rumbling of who it could be or it could be russia. that comment raised real alarm bells in my mind at least in that moment. a couple of moment later, i said to the president, are you serious? when you say this? does it not give you pause to ask a foreign government to hack into the e-mail of anybody in this country. he cut me off and said no, no, it does not give me pause and accusing me of saying hillary clinton the special counsel is asking

witnesses of questions of what donald trump knew about the e-mails and when he knew it. they're looking at that date of july 27th, date, they're going back to it and say why did donald trump say that then? it is a weird thing for a political candidate to say especially at that moment. did he know about them and was he trying to or was he in any way involved in their strategic release, roger stone, is getting tighted tied up as well and the president denied this and so as stone. why is it so important again today is that in this indictment, it says on that very day, donald trump was saying that, for the very first time the con spirspirators attemptedr hours to spear phish for the first time as well as the

clinton campaign for the first time they started not looking into the d.n.c. but the clinton's campaign specifically. you will remember back from the campaign that john podesta's e-mails started coming out and the ""access hollywooaccess hol dropped. podesta came out every single day after that and they suddenly stopped. >> gregg broward, let me turn to you, we look at this indictment and isolation. it raises a lot of questions of how it fits in. give me your sense of that. we talked about there is not any names in the dime. what are you looking for? >> this is a significant development and attribute to all of the hard work of d.o.j.

lawyers and fbi agents have been putting in this for months now. i don't expect it will be the last shoe to drop. this is the best evidence of this russia conspiracy that we have seen and in general terms reach the conclusion that this russia's effort to interfere with the election did take place. this is again, a significant development and a lot of work that remains to be done and the mueller team will be busy going forward to say the least. >> we learn about organization one. victims are not named as we heard from rod rosenstein as we heard from him, what does it say of the approach where he talked about the political call and

context. how unordthodox that you don't have those names? >> it is common. you don't want to name any rules or parties or victims unless you have to. it is not an unusual for an assignment to mix or use -- even if it is painfully obvious, who is that person or the organization ultimate is. this is something that we can eventually figure out everyone if the dodge does not want to put it in its indictment. >> clinton, you are making your way into the indictment as well. i want to ask you of the effort that was mounted here. you have this unit with russia intelligence doing this with servers of illinois and others and katy were talking about the scheme that were used. what did we learn of the scale or the scope of the technological effort here in the u.s. >> the key part is they tried to

mass themselves in different places as being in different countries or being inside the united states. that's from someone else and it is another country or another place they took delivered steps to make shethemselves appear as american. we saw it in internet researches and using proxy servers s takes attributi attribution. this kind of indictment with this sort of detail can be put together for a long time. can i make one remark. the president has known about this for at least a few days. rosenstein said -- >> it may have caused his behavior and you can say he's going into this putin's meeting armed with this information and ready to confront him. that would be according to a lot of americans. that's case scenario. >> the president today as of

today called this a witch haunt. >> he knows about it and he's still calling it a witch hunt. >> and still talking about in the context of asking a question to the russian president. he's not going in there this has happened and what's your respond to it. he told reporters, i will sask the question. >> it is not squiasking a quest we know you meddled in our election, here it is not a question of did you do this or oh, you did not, okay, i am going to move on. the other thing that struck me and you know you got this with danny a moment ago when rosenstein refused to name victims. i thought it was important to remember this. he made this point when we so often forget it and we watch the hearing we saw with peter strzok. she says he did not name tr

victim specifically because he did not want this to be politics and one party over or my party got attacked and i am not upset about it. this is about an attack not only on the democrats but on the american people and on our government and our election system and our democracy. it should be very much that and less about the partisan gaming that we see on capitol hill. >> i want sto ask you what has changed so in terms of timing and the situation is idifferent here. how did the president approach and anyone in the administration changes the results of that. >> it is unlikely that we'll see these folks facing the courtroom here in the united states. there were some knotts to that indictment in this one today. we saw #blacks for hillary.

>> read these two things for me if you would. >> it is an infuriating answer. there is no u.s. government effort right now to stop the russians from interfering from our politics and they continue to do so. we reported from time to time and we can't keep on saying it everyday. i was al an intelligence conference a few months ago. publicly, we have not had the political will to put a stop to what the russians are doing for cyber space. they're on social media and as clint knows he tried these stuff with bots and trolls manipulating on gun rights and racial issues of politics and every intelligence official will tell you they expect him to be back in the midterm elections, they may use different goals in mind. we as a gun shovernment as the

government have done nothing to deter the russians and have done little to organize the government in a way that would come back of the thing that is were described in the february indictment. >> matt miller. say the minority leader via tweet, say that the president should call off the summit. what's your opinion on that and whether or not they should go forward at this point? >> it depends on what the president is going to do. if he's going to walk into the summit and take the facts of the indictment, look, you take the indictment that the special counsel returned earlier this year that dealt with social media activity and it is clear that the russian government launched a multi faceted attack on the u.s. political process and on the american people. it is unacceptable and it needs to stop. if that's the message he send

intends to deliver, i don't mean go in and deliver a week and a nod. if he's going to helicopter con look at these indictments, not as an indictment on the attack on the people but look at it of personal attacks from him then he ought to step back. one of the things i want to mention reading through the indictment. you are talking about dozens of names in the organization and some of the individuals. that may come during early days. there is a person in close contact of trump campaign officials who was communicating with lucifer 2.0. >> we know what he said in the past. that goes to the point that the president is going to have to decide how he views these indictments and if he's ever going to take responsibility for

what people associated with his campaign may have done and he's going to try to clear those people out and he's going to stop doing this investigation as an attack on him and response to an attack on america. >> ken, let's spend a moment more here on 2.0 and there is a lot of twitter handles and it is a thick thing to get to. i want to read one line. goose for 2.0 quoted, received and requested documents for a u.s. congress. that's a startling line of the 20 plus page document. what do we know who that may be? >> what question does it raise for you, ken. >> i don't have time to dig into this. people in nbc news are digging into this and there is some stories out there about a u.s. candidate who acknowledge unwillingly receiving the information from the russians. >> there is been reporting that the russia interference is not

only in the presidential election but in various state races and local races. i don't think we know the full extent of that interference. i raises questions of what health they have. this is beyond potentially the scope of what even the most sophisticated russia intelligence officials would understand of the u.s. political system. i think there are more to be told about the extent of american cooperation. >> david. >> of course, rosenstein was a former u.s. attorney as well. we heard a lot more of rosenstein over the last few weeks. there was the memorable testimony on capitol hill hi. he fought back. what's your offensive seeing him as a principal now, listen to

what he has to said about where this investigation is going. approached the investigation and his belief should continue here outside the political winds. >> i have known and worked with rod for a long time. he would be an outstanding lawyer and dedicated public serva servant. i don't know if today's press conference was in any way a reaction to yesterday's hearing in the house. the hearing as we saw was not one of the house's final moment. it was a purely political show hearing in my view. it was not gamed at over sight or gathering the facts, which after all the oig issued a report about. it is one thing for those committees to waste a lot of time trying to do a needless autopsy of the fbi clinton's

investigation. it is quite another thing though. i think many observers noticed this yesterday. it is quite another thing for house committee to in some way make an effort to undermine the mueller investigation and so this indictment is a wake up call and although it should not have taken an indictment like this. but, it should be a wake up call to house republicans that the mueller investigation israel r and it is not a witch haunt. they will be well-advised to let mueller and his team to helicopter their work instead of trying to undermine his work. >> last question to you here, you heard rosenstein as an adamant. this is is coming out now because everything was ready. now is the time to release it. we have been talking about the

context surrounding this and what we see on pleasant hill as well. does that ring true to you and there would be no reason for them to hold it next week or the week after. >> it does ring through, there are so much objective evidence that this was timed in relation tors the upcoming meeting with russian leader and even based on the hearing that we all saw yesterday but i really do believe that if rosenstein is saying that there was no planning involved and this is not political, the evidence was ready when it is ready. >> u.s. attorneys have a difficult decision to make. everyday they wait to gather more evidence is another day that a potential bad guy is out there on the loose or indicted. they have to make the decision based on what's best for the public and based on the

evidence. they must have truly believe that they needed to indictment. >> clinton, we talked about where we go from here in terms of this investigation. there were some startling pieces in the indictment about how local election committees were hacked and vulnerability to the system itself. >> where do we stand in that as we learn about these elements of spear fishing. we look at our real vulnerable is the in our victim here of this country. >> house of representatives progress has been made. >> ken is laying it out moments ago. it did not seem like the administration took things safely when we got the indictment of russian nationals. >> there are two components.

there is hacking and influence. you can look at the two indictments and research it. >> really social media influenced and this unwione is hacking. >> let's look at social picture. in terms of defending our infrastructure. the committee led the way, that's strange. it does not take a committee to do this. the executive branch will move forward to it. >> dhs have structure and they are working with the state. it has been two years. we have known about this for at least two years. how can we ensure the integrity of the vote is intact and in place and it is about backups. making sure that the public knows. beyond any candidate that the russia are trying to push for it

election rig, voter fraud. that way, it does not matter who wins, you are not sure if the winner is ascended. this is what we need to protect against. we have to get ready for this election coming up in november. >> thank you very much. >> we have this indictment paraded in front of us. thank you to all of you. thank you katy tur who joins us as we continue to follow that throughout the afternoon. >> it is handed by special counsel mueller. >> two big story, the protests that are protesting in london. we'll continue our special coverage of the president's visit there after this. friends. and we got to know the friends of our friends. and we found others just like us. and just like that we felt a little less alone. but then something happened. we had to deal with spam, fake news, and data misuse. that's going to change. from now on,

facebook will do more to keep you safe and protect your privacy. because when this place does what it was built for, then we all get a little closer.

but she's got work to do.pain. so she took aleve.

if she'd taken another pain reliever, she'd be stopping for more pills by now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. aleve. all day strong. i am katy tur, we are following two big stories. twelve russian officers are charged of under taking a wide scale of hacking operation and an attempt of undermining the 2016 election. the justice department announcing the criminal charges and in london, large protests of trump on his trip to the u.k. the president held the news conference came on the hill of a stunning preview. national security analyst clinton watts and matt miller

and gentlemen, i know we have been going through this since it broke. i want to read one portion from the indictment on page six, it spells it out clearly. the object of the conspiracy was to hack into the computers of u.s. persons and entities involved in the 2016 u.s. presidential election. steal those documents from those computers and stage releases to interfere, to interfere with the 2016 u.s. presidential election. i was there covering it and i saw what happened in realtime. this happened. wikileaks released e-mails consistently throughout the end of the campaign to try and influence the election in an effort it seems to help donald trump to win the election. these were e-mails that were damaging to hillary clinton and e-mails that helps donald trump in the, darkest hours he faced during the campaign. >> matt miller, reading through

it. 22 pages. it is incredibly detailed. what does it say to you of the work mueller's team is doing as people on cable news and as lawmakers and people scream about what biases could be there or people try to undermine this investigation or the president of the united states himself even today calls it a witch hunt. >> it shows they have quite been assembling a remarkable case of what the russian government did in 2016. this will be the results of work and not just by the fbi but by the intelligence agency. they have to make a decision here. there is always a cause releasing this kind of detailed information. you give them a signal of what our capabilities are to monotit them. >> they clearly decided and in the intelligence community that pane and cost was acceptable in this case to reveal to the public and reveal to the russians that we know exactly

what we did and the extent we can't under the american justice system, we are going to try to hold them accountable. i think it is incredibly significant that he chose to include the information on the attempted hack on july 27th. he used the phrase for the first time making clear that on that date and even including the information about it happening after hours which if you put the timing together, makes it clear that it was after donald trump made the remarkable request for the russian government to help find clinton e-mails for the first time after he said that. the russians went after hours trying to hack into the clinton's e-mail system. he did not have to include that in the indictment. it was telling that he did. >> do you think july 27 oeth is going to prove one of the important days of the campaign so far? >> we talked about collusion and conspiracy, this is apart of the conspiracy that's always out of

the open. to find his opponent e-mails and release them publicly. we know that adversary did that. it came up during the campaign and he dismissed it and dismissed it during the news conference and i remember when you asked a news conference about it. whatever other evidence bob mueller finds of whether roger stone was communicating of what he was saying wikileaks and 2.0 or whatever else he finds of anyone else on his campaign and what they did in the june 9 99t2016 at trump tower. the president united states is asking a foreign government to commit a crime on his behalf. >> it was the day that i decided to write publicly of the russia social media influence. russia, if you got those e-mails after watching russia rooting

for trump and pushing down clinton for months. our first post came out from the d "the daily" trying to document it. the first campaign that we wrote is about benghazi. on page 10, the con sp conspirators -- hillary cruise and trump were other key things they were looking for. to cruise, it was that time early on and still donald trump's main competitor in april. he was fighting with ted cruz to get the nomination. ted cruz still had the chance to get the nomination. it shows how they were looking for hacked information to be the nuclear field of power. >> right around this time was when paul manafort was hired because donald trump was not sure he's going to hang onto his delicate and convention.

he ultimately did not dpet enough delicates but there was some rumbling that the convention would revolt and the delicates would go to another republican candidate because the republican party did not like donald trump. donald trump hired paul manafort and going back to reagan to come into make sure he could security those delegates. the side note from this indictment is the move on the g.o.p. platform to not arm ukraine against russia. it is interesting and raised a lot of red flags at the time and still something that's still not answered. >> social media and campaigns at this time right after this were one of the ones we talked about the air base. maybe it is a protest. this was prushed in social media influence who shows up on air to talk about that? >> paul manafort. >> why is not everyone talking about the terrorist attack on

syria. when you look at dates and time line, there are not gaps anymore. it is damming and consistent all the way through. it does not mean collusion but it is opportunity. >> rosenstein was specific when he said that this does not mean that you are guilty even if you're named in this. they're trying to prove guilt. number two, he also mention that if you are not named in this, does not mean it will make you guilty. >> every single single d.o.j. indictment. people who are not named does not mean you should not look out. every single time they indict

everybody. everybody is presumed innocent. that's pretty starndard languag. by the time they get to indictment stage. they don't like to lose. they built their case up and really this is a powerful circumstantial case and any of these prosecutions will have to be and because ultimately and the only thing they can show to a jury, here is the computer with so and so who have access to it. searches were conducted and low in be hold over here some where else. what we are seeing of the development of this area is a lot of it ultimately is circumstantial. >> is circumstantial evidence enough? >> absolutely. all direct evidence is a witness saying i saw so and so do this.

people lie and things and records do not lie. that's why the entirety of this indictment speaks to me, a tremendous amount of work by the d.o.j. and if this case ever gets to a trial. the entire case is going to be circumstantial evidence showing that these russians have access to accounts and results. on the american side it may not be collusion but tremendous opportunity. >> one more thing. how much of this comes from our nato partnerships and intelligence agency that we have been working together. it is a consistent theme over the last two years. were the europeans warning us of what's going on our election. did they contribute to the cyber investigation or provided tips and leave. it would be fascinating to know how much of that.

nato alliance that we watched the president bashing it the few days. >> that's a very good point. >> we should point out for pete williams of the evidence, the one that released 20,000 e-mails and other documents stolen from the dnc. according to our pete williams, i think you would have guessed it by now. on the phone joining us now, generjen palmeiri, what do you think when you see this indictment, what's your reaction. >> i found it stunning and they would conclude that vurussia fo the first time attack the clinton's campaign e-mail on the night that trump says hey, russia, if you are listening.

the worse fears that we had in 2016 played out two years later. they have evidence to prove that and it is, i remember that through the democratic convention and my colleagues, what about visit with all the press and say we don't think you are joking. we think this is serious. we think russia is not trying to hack into our campaign but help donald trump. it was far too fantastic. a scenario for most people to take the lead. >> it was certainly unexpected. i was covering the campaign and i was there on the july 27th, news conference as you were at the democratic national

convention with your candidate. donald trump comes in and asked for 30,000 e-mails to be found. i asked if he was serious and he said yes, he was. now we are learning on the same day after hours that clinton points out. according to the indictment for the first time these conspirators and named in this indictment according to mueller are trying for the first time to get e-mails from the clinton's campaign. >> the other thing i have in my mie mind is realizing and remembering the meeting don jr. had at trump tower prior to that where he was told that they will would have damaging information on hillary clinton from the russians. here we are so you have the june meeting where don jr. is meeting with russians and for the purpose of getting bad

information about hillary clinton. and six weeks later, you have donald trump telling russia now they're fine. the other line that immediately comes to mind is right before that meeting, don jr. have with the russians and donald trump said in a campaign -- >> we also have a question of rudy giuliani when he was on fox news saying something would happen in a week. i know it is not apart of the indictment. >> yes, there is a lot of examples of people affiliated with donald trump and his campaign and affiliated with him in a personal or official capacity, roger stones, making predictions of what would come out during the campaign and those elections. those elections are explosive. when you -- let me ask you this

question. have you been interviewed by the special counsel. >> i have not. >> do you expect some point to be interviewed to get your side on the campaign. do you think it is going to happen? >> i don't know. perhaps if they don't -- it would be surprising if they did not. they certainly seem to every turn, they seem to have more evidence than any of us have imagined. >> they have examples and understanding that what ever we are con jjecturing on the outsi, people are always ahead of us. i think you are right to know and katy, any and every time that the trump campaign, something popped up during the

campaign and realtime about them saying and something about the russians. there a those moments are coming back with remarkable details now with these indictments. showing that was not his comments and i aim and i remember that what the fbi dade report on their handling the e-mails that came out about a month ago and the team continue to look at leaks. that suggests to me they may be looking at rudy giuliani and whether he had -- the letter came out whether clinton, and more bad news. >> we have phillip ramos on the

phone. what's your reaction to the release of this indictment today on the day that donald trump was meeting with the queen as the president was standing alongside the queen of glaengland? >> it is similar to jen. it is another example of how we don't know what we don't know. what i found interesting about today is that indictment, we have a fair amount of information and i am not saying in terms of but it has been made public before. in terms of the theory and what's reported by the media the last couple of years. this supports that. i think that begs the question about what else have we known or media has reported that bob mueller is systemically proven

beyond a reasonable doubt. >> if you think about it, i am having a hard time coming up with smog that's alleged or put forward that's been debunked. it feels like it is coming together in a way that's not looking good for donald trump and i comment that i don't think yesterday is a pitiful show by republicans, donald trump was notified at this earlier in the week. i think it stands to reason that word got to his hench men in the house and they seemed to have been intent on doing what they are been doing. also mistaking a lot of noise. >> there is been calls notably by chuck schumer and mark warner for the president to call off

this meeting that he had. >> we have heard back from the finish president obviously. >> according to the finish president, the meeting is still on. another thing that was notable. go ahead. >> i was going to say, there is no way donald trump is going to cancel meetings. what i think is interesting is something he has said efrl mose months back and repeated yesterday. >> he was asked and whether or not he would press vladimir putin and if he denied it. trump have twice i said. look, what am i supposed to do? there is nothing i can do. i am having a hard time thinking the last time i heard donald trump be so powerless. >> the guy is the best sh

negotiator in the world and talking to putin is the one time that he throws his hand in the air and he's got nothing to due. >> that's another interesting data opponent. >> jen, same to you. richard engel is joining us now. richard, what's your take? >> well, i am not sure that today really harm president trump. i think we don't know what we don't know where this will lead to and certainly confirms the media reporting that it has been all along and there is this hack that the russians are dooind -- >> joke on what happened today may even helped them. let me explain why that may be. this is the central crime of the attack on the u.s. electoral el

system. this is it. this is the main thing that happened, what we have been talking about for two years. the attack on the dnc, the penetration attack to get into the computers, live inside those computers, extract information, leak them in a way that harmed the democrats, that harmed hillary clinton by sowi ining division between hillary clinton and barry sanders. that's the crime everyone is looking at. president trump said there is no collusion, that he wasn't involved in the crime, that he in no way worked with the russians to carry out any kind of hacking. he's also said nobody really knows if there was hacking. that claim is pretty much gone at this stage, especially after the indictment. the main issue is collusion. what happened today is the justice department laid out the crime. they said, yes, there was this hack of the dnc. they did get inside the computers. it was carried out by the russians, these russian intelligence agencies.

they identified the crime and the criminal. they didn't say the victim. he said, well, we can't really say there is a victim. even though there is a bloody body on the ground, it was the dnc that was hacked. he came out and said, well, we can't pass judgment who the victim is. i think that's very significant. it is pointing this as a crime perpetrated against the american people, a nebulous crime carried out by the russians in this manner but against whom and for whose benefit, we don't know. this was carried out, as he said himself, in consultation with president trump who is now headed to helsinki. president trump -- and i have heard this from my own reporting -- will bring it up with vladimir putin. he can say, how did you allow this to happen? you shouldn't attack the american people. they are going to talk about cyber security. as he always does, he can say he solved that problem which was really a victimless crime because we don't know who the victim was. >> interesting.

the president may have known this and maybe he's going armed with it, richard. at the same time, this morning he did call it a witch hunt again. >> reporter: that's the witch hunt against him. that's the collusion investigation. >> he's not making -- >> reporter: that's the investigation -- >> -- that distinction. usually he just blankets it. point taken. >> reporter: of course not. muddling it is absolutely part of it. now as he's said, yeah, i guess the russians did hack, but it didn't change the results. he has muddied the water several times. mostly the witch hunt he's talking about is the attacks against him. no collusion. he says time and time again. >> let's go now to chuck todd who joins us as well. our nbc news political director and moderator of "meet the press." this meeting is still happening despite knowing about this, despite calls by chuck schumer and mark warner, not that he'd

listen to them, to cancel it. >> i'm surprised they are the only ones saying to cancel it. at least to postpone it. if you recall, president trump cancelled the north korean summit for a day technically based on what he thought were nasty words said about vice president pence. he threatened to cancel a summit essentially for much less than obviously -- vladimir putin who clearly now -- at least if you believe the united states justice department. they have confirmed vladimir putin lied to the president to his face, if the president is telling us the truth about the hacks. meaning, i have asked him about it and he denies it. he's emphatic about denying it. our justice department is now indicating, mr. president, we believe vladimir putin is lying to you. so why do you take his word on syria, on ukraine?

there is a very strong case to be made that at a minimum this should be postponed until there is a better understanding of what it is we want out of the meeting and what it is the president is ready to ask. going through with it, optically it makes the president -- this makes the president look more guilty if he goes through with it. as if there is a wink and a nod or something. i just think optically -- you could make a political argument if you work for the president to say, mr. president, you would be better off just perception-wise postponing this a little bit. at least look like you're angry. look like you are getting tough regardless whether you are angry or wanting to get tough. >> what do you make of the july 27th date that keeps coming up, the day donald trump asked russia to find the e-mails and the day russia started trying to find the e-mails. >> we'll hear that sound bite

over and over again. let's talk about the sequencing here of the mueller indictments. it's very important. this was the most predictable indictment we knew was coming. we just didn't know when. indicting the individuals. people keep asking, okay, there are no americans and as rod rosenstein said very carefully in this indictment, we now know this, one more shoe will fall from mueller. that's the indictments of the americans that participated in this conspiracy. the americans were always going to be the last indictments. if you are laying this out as methodically as mueller is and you believe they participated in the conspiracy with the russian government you've got to indict the actual criminal first. here today we have the actual 12 criminals, the people that physically stole the material. what we don't know is who organized the material, collated it and helped prepare it for its very well coordinated release.

remember, wikileaks didn't just put it all out there like they had in the past. they put it out piece -- every day was done with a news cycle in mind. seemed to react to what was going on. it's possible wikileaks was only getting material a few days at a time from the source or it is possible wikileaks collated this carefully. i have always believed there is too much knowledge of the american media eco-system, too much knowledge for a foreigner to have sorted those podesta e-mails as cleverly as they were sorted. an american political operative with knowledge of the american media and knowledge of the american political system had to have organized the e-mails. >> yeah. >> i think that's the next big shoe to drop is who conspired with those folks. >> it's a good point, chuck. when you look at the way robert

mueller has laid out his evidence it has been methodical. when you look at the way robert mueller laid out evidence in the past it is always methodical. you can presume maybe they are not paying attention to the daily dramas of cable news and what's going on and maybe not paying attention to every single donald trump tweet. they have to know order to prove a case if there is a case they have to be convincing. in order to do that you've got to take it step by step. what we first had was the indictment of manafort and gates. >> right. >> then the guilty plea for gates, papadopoulos, flynn, for the lawyer for lying. >> exactly. >> then the indictments of the russians with the social media campaigns. and then we all asked what have we not heard? what have we not been hearing about? we haven't heard about hacks into the dnc. today is the day we heard about the hacks into the dnc. it does stand to reason, stand to follow from this that we are

going to get another set of indictments that could take us much further. i don't know this obviously, neither do you. >> actually, in fairness rod rosenstein hinted. number one he said in this indictment, inferring more indictments are coming. there are a lot of ways to read between the lines of the plea for bipartisanship. i heard that plea because what's coming is going to be more divisive, more polarizing. rod rosenstein knows everything mueller has and is pursuing. he's the one person not involved with the probe that knows these things. i read that interpretation of rosenstein realizing, you ain't seen nothing yet, and the next shoe that drops is going to be a big one. you're going to need people's better angels to rise above partisanship and try to treat it in the proper context of a

foreign adversary essentially, aggressively invading our democracy. >> it does come on the heels of the hearing yesterday, chuck. that hearing where peter strozk was made to look like the kingpin in a grand conspiracy to investigate this president. >> i don't want to use the word mccarthyism loosely. but history is going to treat that hearing very unkindly. it is going to be in the same category of embarrassing moments in congressional history. at the top will always be mr. mccarthy and what happened there. this will be in the top five of embarrassing moments. this is a public servant, not a political actor. the way he was treated, the conspiratorial nature, and as bad as it looked yesterday,

given these serious indictments -- and do you know how much work goes into identifying 12 by name russian operatives that did this? it looks even worse after seeing these indictments. does anybody on that republican side of the house judiciary committee and the house oversight committee care one iota about what the russians did? it doesn't look that way, the way they asked the questions yesterday. >> chuck todd, moderator of "meet the press." i don't know if you can stick around. if you come back later, we'd love to have you. >> you've got a show. i have that other one that we have to do. we'll keep ping-ponging each other. >> how about that?